


Best Kept Secret

by Slashcan (AngstandPizzaRolls)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Truth Serum, Truth Spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23993671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngstandPizzaRolls/pseuds/Slashcan
Summary: After Dean is poisoned by a goddess on a hunt, he is forced to reveal his darkest secret. Sam doesn't handle it well.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 115





	Best Kept Secret

**Author's Note:**

> set vaguely in season 4

Bobby opened the door with a flask of holy water in his hand. It took him less than a second to dump the contents over Sam's head. And Sam, weary from the road and all this stress with Dean, scowled as he let the man douse him.

"Good to see you too Bobby," Sam muttered when the old man finally let him into the house.

"Last time you showed up here without your brother, you was possessed." Bobby reminded him, tossing the flask onto a table in the entryway. "Forgive me for being cautious. Where is he anyway?"

"We...we're not," Sam's indignation choked him. He wanted to say that they weren’t attached at the hip. That they were capable of existing without each other but as far as the rest of the world was concerned, no they couldn't.

"Had a little love spat?" Bobby teased, already halfway to the kitchen to retrieve a couple of beers.

"No," Sam growled. His tone was sharp, harsher than he'd intended, and almost deadly in its ferocity.

It stopped Bobby in his tracks before he was turning back to face Sam with one brow arched.

Sam was already apologizing but Bobby cut him off. "You're damn right you're sorry. You better have a good excuse for coming into my house and talking to me that way."

"Dean and I had a fight." Sam tried to keep it vague. He wasn’t sure if he'd be able to look bobby in the eye if he had to tell him the whole truth. But Bobby wasn’t appeased by the half-assed explanation.

"And?"

"I'm not drunk enough for this conversation."

Bobby's fury slid into surprise and he fetched two beers from the fridge before ordering him to sit on the couch and spill.

Sam downed half his drink and Bobby's concerned expression was enough for him to spit it out.

He told Bobby everything. About the creature, about the fight, Dean's confession. By the time he was done, he felt like a great weight had been dragged off his chest and he could finally breathe again. When he looked back at bobby for the first time since he started the story, he was surprised to find him pensive instead of disgusted or angry.

Bobby disappeared for a moment and when he came back, he had a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. "Can't say I'm that surprised."

"What seriously?" Sam huffed out a laugh. The old man was mulling it all over like it was an interesting puzzle instead of life-ruining information. "I tell you my brother's in love with me and that's all you have to say?"

"What do you want me to say?" Bobby shrugged. "You boys've been right next to each other your whole lives, nothing else in the world but your daddy and that car of yours."

"That's what he said." Sam grumbled, then exploded, "but that doesn’t automatically mean romantic feelings. The man practically raised me. How can he...it's just...it's gross."

"He did raise you. He changed your diapers and picked you up when you skinned your knees and saved your life so many times you probably couldn’t even count it." Bobby nodded along as he spoke like he was agreeing with him, but Sam could sense something else coming and it made a ball of dread weigh heavy in his gut. "You're his entire world."

"What are you trying to say?"

"Nothing," Bobby said, staring at Sam for a long time. He seemed to gather his thoughts before saying, "You didn't see him when you were dead."

Sam was silent, unsure what the other man was trying to say.

"The devil's gate was opening. There were more demons around than we had ever seen before and you were dead." Bobby groaned as he pushed to his feet. Sam watched in silence as he paced to his desk. He shifted through the top drawer as he spoke. "You were dead for days and he wouldn't burn your body. Bit my head off every time I brought it up. There were so many demons. Things got so bad out there and I tried to get him to come fight with me. I told him..." Bobby laughed, "I told him the world was ending because I thought if anything would get him away from your bedside it would be that. You know what he said to me? That boy that's fighting tooth and nail to stop the real apocalypse knocking down our door?"

Sam couldn't meet Bobby's eye. He didn't know for sure but he had an idea.

"He said 'let it end'." Bobby straightened up and returned to Sam's side. "I remember clear as a bell him saying that to me. I've seen men do crazy things in their grief but I've never seen a man so hopeless. A hunter that didn’t care about demons. That didn’t care about the world ending. It didn’t really sink in until then that his world has already ended. His world had died days ago and was rotting on a mattress in front of him. So yeah. I'm not surprised."

"Bobby," Sam said, anguish dripping from the word. He ran his hand over his face and felt guilt settling into his bones. It wasn't fair. He shouldn’t have to feel this way. He was the one in the right. Right? What they were talking about, the...incest? It was…

"I'm not saying it's okay, but maybe you shouldn't hate someone for loving you too much," Bobby said, handing over an old photograph.

Sam took it gingerly. It was one he'd never seen before. It had to have been taken right before Sam left for college. Sam and Dean sat together on the hood of a car in bobby's scrapyard. Sam was laughing at something, smile broad and free in a way he hadn’t in a long time. Dean was smiling too, but much softer. And his gaze was fixed on Sam.

It broke something in Sam to see that look on his brother's face. Everything he'd never thought he'd have from his family. Peace, acceptance, fondness, love. Sam put the photograph on the couch beside him. He couldn't look at it anymore.

"Why are you doing this bobby?"

The man must've heard the roughness in his voice. He put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezed tight. "I just don't want this to ruin you. I love you boys like my own and if anything ever happened to you...hell I don't know. But you and Dean are a team. You're brothers. So don't let this little hiccup ruin everything."

"Little hiccup?" Sam knew his voice was harsh but he couldn’t hold it back anymore. "How am I ever supposed to trust him again? He's been lying to me for years. And how can I share a hotel room with him, knowing what's on his mind now? How can I trust him to watch my back on hunts when he's too busy staring at my ass?"

Sam looked away from Bobby's disappointed frown. He knew he deserved it, for the douchey things he'd just said but that didn’t mean he had to face it.

"I took you for a lot of things but I never took you for homophobic."

"I'm not." Sam sighed, slumped. "I don’t know why I said that. I just...this whole thing's got me so mixed up."

"Look, just sleep on it. You can stay here as long as you want to, but think about what I said."

"I will." Sam nodded. "Thanks, Bobby."

"You're welcome." Bobby rose from his chair and stretched, earning a few cracks from old joints. "Now I'm going to bed. If you need something, don’t bother hollering."

Sam smiled reluctantly as the other man climbed the stairs.

Sam didn’t sleep that night. He laid awake staring at the ceiling thinking about the devastated look on Dean's face as he walked out the door. He thought about everything Bobby had said, the story about Dean keeping vigil at his bedside while his corpse started to rot haunted him. Dean's world had died when Sam did. Dean had sold his soul so he could live. All those times he'd called Dean selfish for making that deal and leaving him alone. What if Dean just couldn't live in a world where Sam doesn’t exist? What if Dean had already died and gone to hell when he made that deal. When his brother, the man that he loved, his entire world died.

Sam felt guilt more acutely than he ever had. Worse than when he ran away to Stanford, worse than before he'd kicked ruby to the curb and stopped drinking demon blood. All the pain Dean had suffered, the unrequited pining, the forty years in hell. All of it was his fault.

He almost called him. Had his cell phone open and the number dialed before he remembered why he shouldn't.

Dean didn’t just love him. Dean was in love with him. He was attracted to him. And Sam hadn't even known that he was gay! Or bisexual or whatever he was. How the hell was he ever supposed to face Dean again with the memory of that tender kiss hanging over him?

But Sam had never had a clue before. Was it really that oblivious or was Dean just that good of an actor? If Dean hadn’t been dosed with venom, Sam probably never would've learned the truth. Could he just go back to pretending so they could be brothers again? Did Sam even want that?

For the second time in his life he had the chance to get out from under his family's shadow. He had the chance to be his own man, pursue his own goals instead of being tacked together with Dean like the rest of the world saw them as one collective Winchesters.

Given this sudden chance at freedom, Sam didn’t know what he should do. There was no clear path laid out in front of him like there had been last time. All he knew was that going his own way meant leaving Dean behind and still after everything, sam didn’t know if he could do that.

It took him a week to work up the courage to go back. There were only so many pointed looks and passive-aggressive comments he could get from bobby before it drove him away.

He knew Dean would've moved on. New town, new hunt. But Sam couldn’t make himself call. His finger hovered over Dean's name for far too long but he couldn’t shake the sound of his voice rattling around his head "fucked up. In love. Sorry. Sick."

So he would go back to where he'd left and track Dean from there. He didn’t know how he was going to face him if he couldn’t even talk to him but that was an issue for another time. All he knew right now was that he and Dean were a team and as much as he wanted to cut out the part of himself that needed Dean, he couldn’t.

It wasn’t fair. He'd never questioned the need to be with him before. The restlessness when they were apart. But Dean had gone and twisted it, poisoned it. Made it something ugly that had Sam questioning his own feelings. He wasn’t in love with Dean, though. He knew that.

He knew what love felt like, had even had it once. And this wasn’t it.

His first stop was to the front office of the motel they had stayed in. He was just looking for something Dean may have left behind, or maybe a clue of what direction he was headed in. Instead, he got the manager's confused look and a terse "your buddy paid up til the end of the week"

Getting a spare room key off him wasn’t too hard. In the back of his mind it made him concerned that anything wearing one of their faces could get to them too easily. But he was too preoccupied with concern for Dean to entertain it too much. If he was still here, did that mean the case wasn’t over? Had the goddess returned and infected Dean again, or one of her worshippers seeking revenge?

There was no answer to his knock on the door. He didn’t wait to unlock the door himself. If Dean wasn’t on his feet with a gun pointed through the door by now he never would.

The room was dim, the only light leaking in through the thin curtains. As he pushed the door open, a patch of harsh sunlight was thrown across the room, illuminating the mess.

Takeout containers, empty bottles, and all other sorts of trash were strewn across any flat surface. Clothes were in heaps on the floor. The whole room reeked on sweat and musty sex. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, but when they did, he could just make out a human-shaped lump on the bed under a pile of tangled blankets. The bed that Sam had claimed for himself was pristine, untouched.

Sam approached slowly, senses peaked for danger. Dean should’ve been woken by now. He should have knocked any intruder on his ass by now. A lump of fear swelled in Sam's throat, choking off his breath and making him start to sweat. Had he left Dean vulnerable without back up? Had something horrible happened to him because Sam wasn’t there?

When he made it to the side of the bed, he caught sight of Dean's naked shoulder, his face smooshed against the pillow, a string of drool smeared across his cheek.

He shook his brother once, hard, and Dean jolted awake. In an instant he was sitting upright, dagger in hand, looking ragged but alert.

"Sam?" As soon as he recognized him, he slumped back against the mattress and threw an arm over his eyes. "What are you doing here?"

It wasn’t as hard to hear his voice as Sam thought it was going to be. It was just like normal. Dean hungover and Sam trying to rush him out of bed because it was almost noon and they should’ve been on the road hours ago. But just when Sam was starting to relax, the other side of the bed started to shift.

A blond head poked out from under the blankets. Squinting and probably woken by Dean's rough movements, the woman looked at Dean, then up at Sam, then back down at Dean.

"I'm gonna go." She slipped out of bed and started gathering up her clothes, already dressed in her bra and panties, to Sam's relief.

"Whatever," Dean mumbled, rolling over and pulling the blanket further up.

Poured into her slinky dress, heels in hand, she paused at the door. Looking over at Dean. "Call me?"

"Sure, Katie." Dean waved a dismissive hand in her direction without opening his eyes.

"It's Carrie." She snapped, and Sam wished he hadn’t seen that scorned look in a woman's eyes because of Dean as much as he had.

"That's what I said."

The door slamming after her left them in darkness. Sam stewed in the silence for a moment before he asked, "seriously?"

Dean heaved a huge sigh and seemed to give up on sleep. He dragged himself so he sat up against the headboard and looked groggily at sam. "What?"

"Nevermind," Sam said, pacing away from the bed. He didn’t know why the exchange made him so upset. He knew what his brother was like. Still, it was infuriating to see him blowing off a perfectly nice woman who he apparently had a pretty good time with the night before. Was that the way he treated everyone who shared his bed? Is that how he would’ve treated Sam if Sam had given in and kissed back? No, no. No point in going down that road.

"Seriously, Sam what are you doing here?" Sam heard from behind him as he really took in the mess for the first time. The piles of empty liquor bottles, the half-eaten junkfood.

"Where else would I be?" Sam asked, trying to avoid the issue as long as possible as he gathered up some trash and dumped it in the tiny bin in the bathroom. Maybe if he ignored it for long enough, they could just pretend it never happened. Sam wasn't so lucky.

"After...what I said, and the way you stormed out of here? As far in the other direction as you could get." Dean was unapologetic, putting up a wall of bravado. The only hint of insecurity was in the way he wouldn’t look at Sam.

He didn't know what to say to that. Mostly because his rational mind was thinking the exact same thing. So he just shrugged and said, "you're still my brother" like it was a cure for everything that had gone wrong between them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Dean slump in relief, tensing draining away and he knew he'd said the right thing.

With some of the tension loosened between them, Sam faced him again. "The question is, what are you still doing here?"

Dean shrugged. "Just felt like sticking around."

"You went on a bender!" Sam held up two empty whiskey bottles in each hand.

"Whatever." Dean whipped the blankets back and Sam was very careful not to notice whether he was wearing boxers or not. When he looked back, Dean was in his jeans and yanking on his tee shirt. Sam tried not to notice the way his biceps bulged or the thin trail of hair that slipped into the waist of his pants. But it was impossible not to notice those things now. Now that Dean had shoved the idea into his head so deep it could be shaken loose.

"Did you do anything this week besides trashing your liver and hooking up with random women?"

"I'm a grown-ass man. Stop nagging me." Dean yanked the bottles from Sam and tossed them into the bin a little too forcefully. "And besides, you left."

And sam heard everything he wasn’t saying. Sam left. And Dean didn’t think he was ever coming back. So he reached for the first self-destructive tendencies he could get. He probably would’ve run himself into the ground if Sam hadn’t shown up. But that didn’t matter, because Sam had left.

It was a little too much for Sam to face right then. So he stepped back and watched dean toss his trash around into tidy piles out of spite. When He couldn’t stand the silence anymore, he said, "well I'm back now, so let's hit the road."

"Right, right. Places to be. Things to kill."

And then it was like nothing ever happened. They took off as soon as Dean shoved his stuff into his duffle. Caught wind of a case at lunch and just like that, they were back on the job. Like nothing had even happened. Or at least nothing had happened to Dean.

Sam was stuck remembering it. Stuck wondering if Dean's knee against his under the table was supposed to be suggestive. Or if the wink Dean sent to the busty waitress was calculated to make Sam think what Dean had confessed was no big deal.

He drove himself crazy for days, unable to let it go. When Dean stood too close while they were interviewing a potential witness, Sam wondered if she thought they were a couple. When the motel manager arched his eyebrow at two men sharing a room for the night Sam wondered if he could ever think it was innocent. Did the manager think that Dean purposely got a room with two beds to throw him off? Did Dean even want the extra bed? Or would he be happy role-playing the manager's assumptions behind closed doors?

Sam had never spent so much time thinking about what other people thought or what dean thought of what other people thought of them. Did he like it that more often than not people assumed they were together? Or did he want to be just brothers, leaving the ugly truth of his feelings to fester in the darkest corners of his mind?

But more than anything else, Sam couldn’t stop thinking about the way Dean was acting so normal. He didn’t try to cop a feel in the guise of pulling him out of the path of a charging ghoul. He didn't hesitate to go to bars or flirt with women. He didn’t stare longingly at Sam when he thought he wasn’t looking.

All in all, he was acting normal. Making his stupid jokes, and playing his crappy music too loud, and inhaling his food without chewing. Just Dean. Sam's brother.

And for reasons that Sam couldn’t explain, that pissed him off to no end. It's not like he wanted Dean to pine away after him or be cracking under the weight of his own earthshattering feelings. Sam just wanted a little reassurance. A little proof that it had happened and that Sam wasn’t just imagining it all.

And maybe, if he was getting greedy, a little insight. How far would Dean go? How much did Dean really love him? And how physical did he want it to get?

So he started to push a little. Bending over to pick up stuff more than necessary, cleaning his spoon with his tongue until it sparkled, showing off his muscles at every opportunity. Anything he could think of to catch Dean in some way. But there wasn’t a single crack. For a guy that was supposed to be filled with this burning forbidden desire, he sure knew how to keep his composure.

For weeks it became sort of a challenge until one day he'd had enough of Dean's purposeful obliviousness. Dean had wrecked Sam's peace of mind with his confession. He deserved a little torture.

He left his clean clothes on his bed when he went to shower, a harmless accident. And when he came out of the bathroom, more than half-naked in his tiny motel towel and dripping wet, Dean didn't falter as he cleaned the knives. He didn’t so much as flick his eyes in Sam's direction.

That spike of irritation was back and Sam, petty as it was, was still bent on revenge. He dropped the towel.

Nothing. Not even a twitch.

So he started whistling Metallica.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean freeze. And finally, Finally, he won.

The small victory was enough for now. So Sam turned his back to tug on his boxers. When he turned to grab his jeans, Dean was there, right behind him with such a look of single-minded focus, Sam started to a halt.

Dean's hands were on him a second later, shoving him against the wall with one arm across his throat and the other flat against his stomach to hold him still.

The movement sent a surge of adrenaline through him and his heart was racing. He wasn’t afraid of Dean, or of what he might do. But his body didn’t know that. His nerves were hyperalert and he was so aware of everywhere Dean was touching him. Of the way he was almost naked and Dean was leaning in closer.

"Is this fun for you?" Dean's breath was hot against Sam's ear, sending tiny shivers down his arms. "You think this is a game?"

Dean pulled back a few inches to see Sam's response. But he was too shocked, by the way Dean was acting, by the way his body was responding, thrumming and straining to close the distance between them. Dean couldn’t have seen anything but a deer in the headlights when he looked at Sam. He huffed and shoved away, making Sam jump and shudder at the sudden rush of cold air.

Sam stood stunned, watching Dean toss the knives into their weapons duffel and sling it roughly over his shoulder.

He didn't look up, but Sam could see the tension between his brows and the way his jaw was working, clenching and unclenching in his frustration. Dean stormed out the door, only pausing to snap, "get dressed and get your ass in the car."

It was another minute before Sam could move away from the wall. His shock was leaking away and leaving only sickening guilt heavy in his gut. Along with a dull burn that had ignited the moment Dean put his hands on him.

The town had barely shrunk in their rearview mirror when Sam couldn’t keep quiet any more. Dean was gripping the steering wheel so tight sam swore he could hear the leather groaning. Grinding his teeth as he glared at the road.

"I'm sorry," Sam said, no need to explain what for.

Sam didn’t think he was going to respond. Dean was quiet for a long time before he finally bit out, "You just couldn’t leave it the fuck alone."

The stress in Dean's voice made Sam's response stick in his throat. Dean seemed to take his silence as guilt because he went on quieter than before. "You came back and I thought maybe we could actually put all this shit behind us. But you just couldn’t resist the chance to mock me."

"I wasn’t mocking you" Sam said, no thought required. The situation had been weird but Sam was telling the truth. "I just wanted to know..." what, exactly? There was no way that he could finish that sentence without pissing Dean off.

Dean scoffed, unconvinced. "Did you get your answer?"

Sam didn’t say anything, just turned his gaze out the window and tried to forget the twisting regret in his stomach. How is it that he was the one that felt guilty? Dean was the one who had ruined everything between them. Sam almost threw that back in his face too. If anyone should be getting a lecture here it should be Dean.

But Dean was on a roll, his anger driving him to say more than he ever would've about it. "Did you finish your little science experiment? What exactly was it that you wanted to know? Huh? You wanted to know if you could get me to spring a stiffy for my little brother?"

Sam shifted in his seat. Dean had his the nail on the head with that one but there was no way in hell he was admitting to that. He could feel his cheeks heating up at being called out.

"You want to know how hard it is for me to be around you all the damn time. Knowing I'd give anything to touch you and that you would hate me for even thinking it."

Sam swallowed, wanting Dean to stop but not knowing how to make him. He didn’t want to think about Dean touching him, wanting to touch him like that. He could still feel Dean's hand on his bare stomach just inches from his waistband. He shivered. And Dean still wouldn’t stop.

"Did you want to know that I dream about it sometimes? About being on top of you, inside of you. Fucking you so deep you can feel it down to your toes." Dean's voice was low, scraping. It made Sam's skin burst into goosebumps. He was aware of his breath, harsh even to his own ears and he knew Dean could hear it too. Dean could probably feel the heat coming off of him as it spread up down his neck, his chest, low into his gut. His body was responding to Dean like it craved everything he was saying. He could see it too. Imagine dean above him so easily, the way he would growl as he fucked into Sam.

"I used to wake up shaking. So hard I could cut glass. And all I wanted was to jerk off. But you were always lying there in the next bed. I couldn’t risk you waking up to see me coming at just the sight of you."

Sam was nearly trembling, his body thrummed with pulsing blood and a craving that was terrifying and new. His dick was heavy between his legs, hot and demanding to be touched.

"Is that what you wanted to know?" Dean asked, blowing out a long breath. Not entirely unaffected by his own memories.

"Yes." Sam chokes out, the word itself strained as he tried to hold back the needy sigh that wanted to come out with it.

Dean's grip on the steering wheel shifted, and he glanced over. Anger taken over by surprise at Sam's unsteadiness. He did a double-take at the sight of Sam, keeping his eyes away from the road for far too long for comfort.

Sam shifted, all too aware of the heavy weight of eyes on him but unable to return the gaze. Not when his body was singing with need for something he never should've even considered.

Dean slumped back in his seat, and his eyes were on focused as he stared at the road. A simple, "oh" was all he said.

And that was it.

It was too much for Sam. He started to laugh, even when Dean's irritation came back, Sam couldn’t stop. He was laughing until he was wiping tears away from his eyes and Dean wasn’t able to resist a small incredulous smile.

"What is wrong with us?" Sam asked when he was finally able to catch his breath again.

"Us?" Dean asked. As much as he tried to hide it, Sam could hear the hope on the edge of his voice.

"Apparently." Sam shrugged. It was that simple. He chuckled until his bewildered amusement faded and Dean was silent through it all, small crease loosening between his brows.

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
